ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CEREBRAL PALSY AND AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

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VLADIMIR TRAJKOVSKI, MD, PhD, Full Professor

Macedonian Scientific Society for Autism, Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Philosophy, University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”

Address: Blvd. “Goce Delchev 9A, 1000 Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

E-mail: vladotra@fzf.ukim.edu.mk

Abstract

Relevance: Clinical heterogeneity among children with neurodevelopmental disorders reflects diversity in strengths and needs that can have important implications for therapeutic management. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is sometimes a co-occurring associated condition of cerebral palsy. Whereas cerebral palsy affects motor functioning, autism affects certain areas of brain development. Cerebral palsy (CP) is primarily a motor disorder, caused by a cerebral lesion occurring in the developing brain.

Purpose: To explore autism spectrum symptoms in children with cerebral palsy (CP), and the association between autism spectrum symptoms and medical and psychiatric co-morbidity.

Results: Over the past two decades there has been greater recognition that risk of mental health and neurobehavioral disorders is shared across the broad continuum of developmental medicine, including cerebral palsy. The current best practice for diagnosing ASD in a child with CP is completing a thorough clinical assessment and combining this with the clinician’s

judgement. The assessment of ASD in the face of CP should entail a detailed history, examination and structured observation of the child’s social and communication skills, complemented with standardized diagnostic instruments which are validated for children with motor difficulties. Both conditions are discovered at roughly the same age, usually. Cerebral palsy is usually discovered a little earlier, at perhaps 6 months to 2 years of age. Autism is discovered a little later, usually by 5 years of age.  They are highly variable, with some symptoms present in some children but not others. Both conditions can be very severe or hardly noticeable.

Conclusions: A holistic approach is required when evaluating a child who demonstrates impairments in social communication skills in the presence of motor impairment More attention should be given to autism spectrum symptoms in the regular follow-up of children with CP in an attempt to enhance social functioning.

Key words: cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorders, neurodevelopmental disorders.

VIII interdisciplinary congress in Moscow

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The president of MSSA Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski is invited lecturer at the VIII interdisciplinary vocational scientific congress with international participation “Children’s cerebral palsy and other disorders in children’s movement”, which will be held from 1 to 2 November 2018 in Moscow, Russia. Within the 30 minute lecture he will speak on the topic: “Association between Cerebral Palsy and Autism Spectrum Disorders”. Besides the lecture, significant contacts are planned with medical institutions from Russia and across Europe.

New web site of MSSA has been launched

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Dear colleagues,
I am very pleased to inform you that on the great holiday, the Day of the Macedonian Revolutionary Struggle – 23 October 2018, the new website of the Macedonian Scientific Society for Autism was enriched with new contents, new photos and new events. Namely, why new? To be honest, we had no plans to make a new one. But because of the big accident that happened with our former hosting that was going through the company Ars Lamina, who changed the servers, and their webmaster did not update it regularly, it was not back up and we stayed with an old website updated until 2011. Great drama for us with lost lot of data, files and the like. After a couple of weeks of negotiation, will they find a solution, but once I see that they are powerless, I decided to make a new web site and I asked my dear friend and web master Gjorgji Pop Gjorgiev to the magazine JRDDD, which without hesitation accepted and in 15 days we have a new web page. On this occasion I owe him great gratitude to him, but also to the colleagues from Ars Lamina who, although they made us irreparable damage at the moment, still have been hosting our web site for five years. I would like to apologize here (because, it was no our fault, we were not available) to all those who visited our domain in recent weeks and watched old content or an empty page. I sincerely hope that you will like the new website, for which I invite you to visit the above link.
President of MSSA